Friday, 7 March 2014

Musical Friday: I See You In All The Other Women

Dear friends,

Today I shall tell you about a special Romanian band, a band that I listen to even since I was a teenager. You probably never heard of it before but it is very dear to me so I need to share at least a song from them with you :) Taxi is a Romanian
pop-rock band. Their sound is an eclectic mix of rock and contemporary
pop, occasionally introducing other influences such as hot Nashville-style guitar licks.
The band was founded March 13 (guess why I wanted to present them to you this month?! :p), 1999 in Bucharest.
Dan Teodorescu, songwriter, lead vocalist and the band's leader, first
recruited Adrian Bortun, with whom he had previously played in Altceva
("Something Else"). Bortun recruited his former bandmate Andrei
Bărbulescu from Sarmalele Reci ("The Cold Sarmale"; sarmale are meat rolls with cabbage - traditional romanian dish served usually with mamaliga); Dan recruited Georgică Pătrănoiu with whom he had also played before.
Their first Romanian hit was "Criogenia salvează România"
("Cryogenics saves Romania"), which gained them fans even among the
members of the Romanian Parliament with its ironic political lyrics.

Hai să ne băgam cu toţii-n nişte frigidere mari

Să ne congelăm pentru vreo sută de ani

Şi să-i aşteptăm liniştiţi pe-americani

Poa' să vină japonezii, poa' să vină şi nemţii

Să ne facă reformă că noi nu avem pretenţii

Doar atât le vom cere: să nu ne uite-n frigidere

- Dan Teodorescu - "Criogenia salvează România"

Let's put ourselves all in some huge refrigerators

To freeze for about 100 years

And let the Americans come and solve our problems.

Even the Japanese and the Germans may come

To reform our economy;

We will not complain, but we have a small thing to ask:

"Please, do not forget us in the fridge!..."

It was followed by an EP Jumătate de album (Half an album),
after which drummer Andrei Bărbulescu left and was replaced by Lucian
Cioargă. Shortly after their song "Luna" ("The Moon") became the
Romanian nominee to the 2000 Eurovision Song Contest. They came in seventeenth, a higher rank than any other Romanian band ever had, but disappointing
nonetheless. A few months after the Festival in Stockholm, they debuted
an English-language song called "E.B.U - European Broadcasting Union":
"We played poker by their rules... But in the end, they told us that
four jacks are stronger than four aces." The song continues on, using an
obscene expletive to express their disregard for the contest.

Taxi welcomed the 2000 millennium with a song "Doi zero zero zero" ("Two zero zero zero"). Jumătate de album was expanded in July 2000 to a full album Trag un claxon (Honk a Horn).
A succession of Romanian hist included "Comunitaru" ("Stray Dog"),
which addresses Bucharest's plan of spaying and euthanizing ownerless
dogs from the point of view of one of the dogs. The song describes,
ironically, the state of the Romanian economy and society, then goes on
to a chorus:

Castraţi-mă, castraţi-mă,

Sau, dacă vreţi, eutanasiaţi-mă,

Pentru că singura voastră problemă

Sunt eu, câinele comunitar'.

- Dan Teodorescu, "Comunitaru"

(Castrate me, castrate me,

Or, if you like, euthanize me,

Because your only problem

Is me, the stray dog.)

This appeared on their 2001 album Americanofonia, the title track of which is a song about the flood of English-language expressions entering Romanian:

Business, meeting, briefing, trading,

Casting, shopping, fashion, trend,

Dealer, broker, leader, joker,

Manager, advertising, P.R., brand,

Lobby, hobby, weekend, party,

Timeout, fifty-fifty, supermarket, copyright,

Discount, cash, card, net, mail, chat, standby,

D.J., V.J., L.P., C.D., bye-bye!

Oops, yeah...

Suntem anglofoni, americanofoni,

Suntem bu-bu, bu-bu, bu-bufoni.

- Dan Teodorescu, "Americanofonia"

(We're English-speakers, American-speakers,

We're foo-foo foo-foo foo-fools.)

Teodorescu was married for four years to Melania Medeleanu; the
autumn 2006 divorce was amicable, and Medeleanu sings on one track of
the 2007 Taxi album Romantica. There are several other collaborators on the album, including Cheloo of Paraziţii.
In late 2010, they released the single "Cele două cuvinte" (The two
words). The video featured more than two dozen male Romanian celebrities
(actors, singers, TV personalities, athletes, filmmakers) explaining
men's inability to say "I LOVE YOU" and became a YouTube hit, receiving
more than 1,500,000 views in less than 2 months.

The song of today is named Te Vad In Toate Femeile (I See You In All The Other Women) and it is a wonderful ballade about the way a man passes through the ending of the relationship with the one he loves.

The lyrics talk about how he is trying to have a normal life, how he has no problem with that - that he is just existing now, no longer living. He drinks his coffee as usual, he has walks in the evening and maybe sometimes he thinks of her... The chorus is beautiful and basically states that he is looking for her in all the women he is meeting or the ones that he sometimes wants physically. He still sees her in all the women he has the impression that he loves... The rests of the song tells his daily struggle of shutting her out of his mind but not succeeding that. It is sad when we also find out that he sometimes meets her friends, that in the meanwhile they become his friends as well and they do tell him that sometimes she asks about him as well...

***

For me this song is also the story about 2 very stubborn people... We know that he made the mistake, from how the lyrics are written but we know not what separated them. The lack of communication though is a problem!